Word-Wednesday for April 5, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 5, 2023, the fourteenth Wednesday of the year, the third Wednesday of spring, and the ninety-fifth day of the year, with two-hundred seventy days remaining. Brought to you by Bead Gypsy Studio - 30% off Clothing, and ALL stainless steel chains on sale now!

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for April 5, 2023
Couples of Canada Goose have already been spotted lolling in the spotty field ponds from snow melt days earlier this week. Mephitis mephitis has also started to emerge from hibernation, so keep a close eye on Fido.

Full moon today!

For hummingbird fans, we’ll be following the hummingbird migration progress map weekly.


April 5 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


April 5 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for April 5, 2023
Sunrise: 6:53am; Sunset: 7:59pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 7:40pm; Moonset: 6:55am, full moon, 99% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for April 5, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             43                     75                     25
Low              20                    -11                     17

Late Snow
by M. R. Peacocke


    An end. Or a beginning.

    Snow had fallen again and covered

    the old dredge and blackened mush

    with a gleaming pelt; but high up there

    in the sycamore top. Thaw

    Thaw, the rooks cried,

    sentinel by ruined nests.


    Water was slacking into runnels

    from drifts and pitted snowbacks,

    dripping from the gutter and ragged

    icicle fringes. Snow paused

    in the shining embrace of bushes,

    waiting in the ledged curds and bluffs

    to tumble into soft explosions.

    And suddenly your absence

    drove home its imperatives like frost,

    and I ran to a high field

    clumsily as a pregnant woman

    to tread our names in blemished

    brilliant drifts; because the time we have

    is shrinking away like snow.


April 5 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Passover begins
• First Contact Day
• Gold Star Spouses Day
• National Flash Drive Day
• National Nebraska Day
• National Deep Dish Pizza Day
• Childhelp National Day of Hope
• National Read A Road Map Day
• National Caramel Day
• National Go For Broke Day
• National Walking Day
• International Day of Conscience
• Feast Day of Ruadhán of Lorrha

April 5 Word Riddle
What are the three dimensions of the common credit card?*


April 5 Word Pun
May you live as long as you want, and not want as long as you live. — An Irish Toast

Cinnamon, eggs, bread, and maple syrup. — A French Toast


April 5 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
INSCRIPTION, n. Something written on another thing. Inscriptions are of many kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record of his services and virtues. To this class of inscriptions belongs the name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument. Following are examples of memorial inscriptions on tombstones: (See EPITAPH.)

    In the sky my soul is found,
    And my body in the ground.
    By and by my body’ll rise
    To my spirit in the skies,
    Soaring up to Heaven’s gate.
    1878.

Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree. Cut down May 9th, 1862, aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds. Indigenous.

           Affliction sore long time she boar,
            Phisicians was in vain,
            Till Deth released the dear deceased
           And left her a remain.
           Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss.

The clay that rests beneath this stone
As Silas Wood was widely known.
Now, lying here, I ask what good
It was to let me be S. Wood.
O Man, let not ambition trouble you,
Is the advice of Silas W.

Richard Haymon, of Heaven. Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874.


April 5 Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Weight-Loss Pills Stolen from Warroad Pharmacy: Police Say Suspect Still at Large


April 5 Etymology Word of the Week
lichen
/ˈlī-kən/ n., any of numerous complex plantlike organisms made up of an alga or a cyanobacterium and a fungus growing in symbiotic association on a solid surface, from 1715, from Latin lichen, from Greek leichen "tree-moss, lichen," originally "what eats around itself," probably from leichein "to lick" (from Proto-Indo-European root leigh- "to lick"). Used earlier (c. 1600) of liverwort, which was thought to be related.

In his book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature, biologist David George Haskell, describe lichens this way:

The quietude and outer simplicity of the lichens hides the complexity of their inner lives. Lichens are amalgams of two creatures: a fungus and either an alga or a bacterium. The fungus spreads the strands of its body over the ground and provides a welcoming bed. The alga or bacterium nestles inside these strands and uses the sun’s energy to assemble sugar and other nutritious molecules. As in any marriage, both partners are changed by their union. The fungus body spreads out, turning itself into a structure similar to a tree leaf: a protective upper crust, a layer for the light-capturing algae, and tiny pores for breathing. The algal partner loses its cell wall, surrenders protection to the fungus, and gives up sexual activities in favor of faster but less genetically exciting self-cloning. Lichenous fungi can be grown in the lab without their partners, but these widows are malformed and sickly. Similarly, algae and bacteria from lichens can generally survive without their fungal partners, but only in a restricted range of habitats. By stripping off the bonds of individuality the lichens have produced a world-conquering union. They cover nearly ten percent of the land’s surface, especially in the treeless far north, where winter reigns for most of the year.    Blue or purple lichens contain blue-green bacteria, the cyanobacteria. Green lichens contain algae. Fungi mix in their own colors by secreting yellow or silver sunscreen pigments. Bacteria, algae, fungi: three venerable trunks of the tree of life twining their pigmented stems.

The algae’s verdure reflects an older union. Jewels of pigment deep inside algal cells soak up the sun’s energy. Through a cascade of chemistry this energy is transmuted into the bonds that join air molecules into sugar and other foods. This sugar powers both the algal cell and its fungal bedfellow. The sun-catching pigments are kept in tiny jewel boxes, chloroplasts, each of which is enclosed in a membrane and comes with its own genetic material. The bottle-green chloroplasts are descendants of bacteria that took up residence inside algal cells one and a half billion years ago. The bacterial tenants gave up their tough outer coats, their sexuality, and their independence, just as algal cells do when they unite with fungi to make lichens. Chloroplasts are not the only bacteria living inside other creatures. All plant, animal, and fungal cells are inhabited by torpedo-shaped mitochondria that function as miniature powerhouses, burning the cells’ food to release energy. These mitochondria were also once free-living bacteria and have, like the chloroplasts, given up sex and freedom in favor of partnership.

We are Russian dolls, our lives made possible by other lives within us. But whereas dolls can be taken apart, our cellular and genetic helpers cannot be separated from us, nor we from them. We are lichens on a grand scale.

April 5 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 456 Saint Patrick returns to Ireland as a missionary bishop.
• 1803 First performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Second Symphony in D.
• 1887 Anne Sullivan teaches the word "water" to Helen Keller.
• 1895 Oscar Wilde loses libel case against Marquess of Queensberry.
• 1902 Maurice Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte (Pavane for A Dead Princess) premieres.

April 5 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1588 Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher, author of Leviathan.
• 1595 John Wilson, English composer.
• 1626 Jan van Kessel, Flemish painter.
• 1824 Sydney Thompson Dobell, English poet.
• 1830 Alexander Muir, Canadian composer of The Maple Leaf Forever.
• 1835 Vítězslav Hálek, Czech poet.
• 1837 Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet.
• 1856 Booker T. Washington, American educator.
• 1883 Maude Mary Ball, Irish painter and sculptor.
• 1908 George Schick, Czech conductor.
• 1908 Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor.
• 1917 Robert Bloch, American science-fiction author.
• 1920 Arthur Hailey, English novelist.
• 1925 Oldřich Flosman, Czech composer.
• 1933 Barbara Holland, American author.
• 1934 Stanley Turrentine, American jazz saxophonist.
• 1944 Ann Maxwell, American science-fiction author.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem or pram) from the following words:

• abient: /ˈab-ē-ənt/ adj., characterized by avoidance or withdrawal.
• brume: /bro͞om/ n., mist or fog.
• cataleptic: /ˌkadl-ˈep-tik/ adj., affected by or characteristic of catalepsy, a medical condition characterized by a trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body, from the Greek /katalēptikē/, derived from the verb /katalambanein/, meaning “to apprehend,” “to firmly grasp”.
• disembogue: /ˌdis-əm-ˈbōɡ/ v., (of a river or stream) emerge or be discharged into the sea or a larger river.
• foehn: /fən/ n., a hot southerly wind developing in the lee of any mountain range.
• mammothrept: /ˈmæ-moʊ-ˌθrɛpt/ n., a spoilt child; (usually /figurative/) a person of immature judgement; a severe critic.
• pibroch: /ˈpē-ˌbräKH/ n., a form of music for the Scottish bagpipes involving elaborate variations on a theme, typically of a martial or funerary character.
• quaestuary: /ˈkwes(h)-chə-ˌwe-rē/ adj., interested in or undertaken for monetary gain or profit.
• retromingent: /ˌre-trə-ˈmin-jənt/ n., an animal that urinates backward because of bodily configuration.
• volya: /'vōl-līə/ воля UKRANIAN, n., willpower; liberty; wish.

April 5, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
Poetry Words
It’s Poetry Month!  Language is the craft into which we pour our selves, flowing along on the winds and currents of feeling and time. When our craft becomes too small to hold all that we might feel, language overflows into poetry. Canadian poet and Native American culture scholar Robert Bringhurst talks about poetry and meaning in his book, The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology, particularly the differences between English and the native language of the Haida people:

It is not necessary that /the same things/ should be ineffable in all languages. It is only necessary that in each language /plenty of things/ should be so: unsayable, or, at the very least, unsaid.

It seems to me that a kind of speechlessness — the inability to say a quite significant number of things — is actually built into every language. But language itself is a self-transcending mechanism. It tries, and lets us try, to say what it can’t. The survival of poetry depends on the failure of language. The reason language exists, it seems to me, is that poetry — the resonance of being — needs it. If you live in a place that hasn’t been pillaged and ruined, the silence of language’s failure, and of poetry’s success, is present and vivid almost everywhere you listen, almost everywhere you look.

To get you ready for all the poetry you’re bound to read this month, here’s a list of some poetic terms — common and otherwise — to help you identify what you’re reading:
alexandrine: /ˌa-lig-ˈzan-ˌdrēn/ n., in English, a 12-syllable iambic line adapted from French heroic verse. The last line of each stanza in Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To a Skylark” is an alexandrine.

anaphora: /ə-ˈna-f(ə-)rə/ n., the repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line.

blank verse: /blangk vurs/ n., unrhymed iambic pentameter.
    
caesura: /si-ˈzyu̇r-ə/ n., an audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle. (An audible pause at the end of a line is called an end-stop.) The French alexandrine, Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter, and Latin dactylic hexameter are all verse forms that call for a caesura.

chiasmus: /kī-ˈaz-məs/ n., from the Greek letter Chi ( Χ ), a "crossed" rhetorical parallel. That is, the parallel form a:b::a:b changes to a:b::b:a to become a chiasmus.

choriamb: /KAWR-ee-amb/ n., Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of two stressed syllables enclosing two unstressed; a trochee followed by an iamb. It is rarely used as a metrical scheme in English poetry, though Algernon Charles Swinburne imitated this classical meter in “Choriambics.”

couplet: /ˈkə-plət/ n., a pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. A couplet is “closed” when the lines form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence (see Dorothy Parker’s “Interview”:The ladies men admire, I’ve heard, /Would shudder at a wicked word.”). The “heroic couplet” is written in iambic pentameter and features prominently in the work of 17th- and 18th-century didactic and satirical poets such as Alexander Pope: “Some have at first for wits, then poets pass’d, /Turn’d critics next, and proved plain fools at last.”

dactyl: /ˈdak-tᵊl/ n., a metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables; the words “poetry” and “basketball” are both dactylic. Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is written in dactylic meter.

dimeter: /ˈdi-mə-tər/ n., a line of verse composed of two feet.

Some go local
Some go express
Some can’t wait
To answer Yes,

writes Muriel Rukeyser in her poem “Yes”, in which the dimeter line predominates.

eclogue: / ˈek-ˌlȯg/ n., a brief, dramatic pastoral poem, set in an idyllic rural place but discussing urban, legal, political, or social issues. Bucolics and idylls, like eclogues, are pastoral poems, but in nondramatic form. See Edmund Spenser’s “Shepheardes Calendar: April,” Andrew Marvell’s “Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn”.

ekphrasis: /ˈek-frə-səs/ n., “description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion:
                   What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
                What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
                   What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

                Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
                         Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
                Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
                         Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
                Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
                         Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
                     Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
                Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
                       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
                             For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

                Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
                           Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
                And, happy melodist, unwearied,
                           For ever piping songs for ever new. . . .

enjambment: /in-ˈjam-mənt/ n., the running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped. William Carlos Williams’s “Between Walls” is one sentence broken into 10 enjambed lines:
           the back wings
           of the

           hospital where
           nothing

           will grow lie
           cinders

           in which shine
           the broken

           pieces of a green
           bottle

foot: /ˈfu̇t/ n., the basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stress with one or more unstressed syllables.

free verse: /frē vurs/ n., poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

iamb: /ˈī-ˌam(b)/ n., a metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. The words “unite” and “provide” are both iambic. It is the most common metrical foot in English poetry (including all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare), as it is closest to the rhythms of English speech. In Robert Frost’s “After Apple Picking” the iamb is the vehicle for the “natural,” colloquial speech pattern:
       My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
       Toward heaven still,
       And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
       Beside it, and there may be two or three
       Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
       But I am done with apple-picking now.
       Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
       The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

litotes: /ˈlī-tə-ˌtēz/ n., a deliberate understatement for effect; the opposite of hyperbole. For example, a good idea may be described as “not half bad,” or a difficult task considered “no small feat.” Litotes is found frequently in Old English poetry; “That was a good king,” declares the narrator of the Beowulf epic after summarizing the Danish king’s great virtues.

metonomy: /mə-ˈtä-nə-mē/ n., a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it, e.g. "White House" for "the President."

ode: /ˈōd/ n., a genre of lyric, an ode tends to be a long, serious meditation on an elevated subject.

palinode: /ˈpa-lə-ˌnōd/ n., an ode or song that retracts or recants what the poet wrote in a previous poem. For instance, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales ends with a retraction, in which he apologizes for the work’s “worldly vanitees” and sinful contents.

panegyric: /ˌpa-nə-ˈjir-ik/ n., a poem of effusive praise. Its origins are Greek, and it is closely related to the eulogy and the ode. See Ben Jonson’s “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” or Anne Bradstreet’s “In Honor of That High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth.”

pastiche: /pa-ˈstēsh/ n., a patchwork of lines or passages from another writer (or writers), intended as a kind of imitation. The term also refers to an original composition that deliberately mimics the style of another author, usually in a spirit of respect rather than mockery or satire.

pentameter: /pen-ˈta-mə-tər/ n., a line made up of five feet — the most common metrical line in English.

poetaster: /ˈpō-ə-ˌta-stər/ n.,    a derogatory term for an inferior poet.

scansion: /ˈskan(t)-shən/ n., the identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter. To "scan" a line of poetry is to mark its stressed and unstressed syllables.

sestina: /se-ˈstē-nə/ n., a complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines. The patterns of word repetition are as follows, with each number representing the final word of a line, and each row of numbers representing a stanza:

              1 2 3 4 5 6
              6 1 5 2 4 3
              3 6 4 1 2 5
              5 3 2 6 1 4
              4 5 1 3 6 2
              2 4 6 5 3 1
              (6 2) (1 4) (5 3)

squib: /ˈskwib/ n., a short piece of humorous or satiric writing.

Svensk: /svensk/ n., a dialectic vriting style in vich the letter "w" is replaced vith the letter "v".

trochee: /ˈtrō-(ˌ)kē/ n., a metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable. Examples of trochaic words include “garden” and “highway.” William Blake opens “The Tyger” with a predominantly trochaic line: “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright.” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is mainly trochaic.

zeugma:    /ˈzüg-mə/ n., a figure of speech in which one verb or preposition joins two objects within the same phrase, often with different meanings. For example, “I left my heart—and my suitcase—in San Francisco.” Zeugma occurs in William Shakespeare’s “Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun”:

Golden Lads, and Girles all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust.”
Where “coming to dust” refers to the chimney-sweeper’s trade as well as the body’s decay.

In the end, Wendell Berry reminds us that with poetry, it’s not about the words; it’s about how we allow them to find us.

HOW TO BE A POET
    (to remind myself)

    Make a place to sit down.
    Sit down. Be quiet.
    You must depend upon
    affection, reading, knowledge,
    skill — more of each
    than you have — inspiration,
    work, growing older, patience,
    for patience joins time
    to eternity. Any readers
    who like your poems,
    doubt their judgment.

    Breathe with unconditional breath
    the unconditioned air.
    Shun electric wire.
    Communicate slowly. Live
    a three-dimensioned life;
    stay away from screens.
    Stay away from anything
    that obscures the place it is in.
    There are no unsacred places;
    there are only sacred places
    and desecrated places.

    Accept what comes from silence.
    Make the best you can of it.
    Of the little words that come
    out of the silence, like prayers
    prayed back to the one who prays,
    make a poem that does not disturb
    the silence from which it came.


From A Year with Rilke, April 5 Entry
Narcissus, from Uncollected Poems

Narcissus vanished. All that remained
was the fragrance of his beauty—
constant and sweet, the scent of heliotrope.
His task was only to behold himself.

Whatever emanated from him he loved back into himself.
He no longer drifted in the open wind,
but enclosed himself in a narrowing circle
and there, in its grip, he extinguished himself.

Narcissus
by Auguste Rodin

Be better than yesterday,
learn a new word today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.




*length, width, and debt.